Syrian aide asks rebels to give up weapons

As Syrian opposition leaders met in Turkey over the weekend to try to iron out their differences, Syria's foreign minister invited rebels to join a national dialogue, promising that all those who lay down their arms and forswear foreign intervention will be part of a transitional government.

“I tell the young men who carried arms to change and reform — take part in the dialogue for a new Syria and you will be a partner in building it,” the foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, said in an interview broadcast on Syrian state television on Saturday. “Why carry arms?”

The minister's offer went a significant step beyond what President Bashar Assad proposed in a speech on Jan. 6, when he called for a national dialogue but intimated that those who had taken up arms would be excluded.

To many of those fighting Assad, any suggestion of talks with a government they hold responsible for the civil war that has killed more than 60,000 people is absurd, even offensive. Even those in the opposition who reject the use of weapons refused to engage with Assad in the talks he proposed.

Yet at least some in the Syrian government appear to be aiming to wrest the initiative from Assad's opponents, who remain divided.

Meanwhile, those Syrians who are still on the fence increasingly worry about violence with no end in sight, and the world faces the specter of a failed state in a strategic area of the Middle East.

Still, in a government that was never transparent and has become even murkier during the conflict of nearly two years, it was unclear whether al-Moallem spoke with full authority. Broadcasting the speech on state television appeared to give it more weight than other calls for dialogue offered by government figures like Vice President Farouk al-Shara, who proposed an inclusive dialogue in an interview with a Lebanese newspaper in December.

Most rebels would probably be reluctant to trust any assurances that they could safely lay down arms from a government whose harsh crackdown on peaceful protesters set off the conflict in March 2011.

The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the opposition exile group formed in November at the behest of Western and some Persian Gulf nations, has said that Assad's ouster or resignation is a precondition for talks.